Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats

Auditory feedback from the animal's own voice is essential during bat echolocation: to optimize signal detection, bats continuously adjust various call parameters in response to changing echo signals. Auditory feedback seems also necessary for controlling many bat communication calls, although...

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Main Authors:	Liu, Ying, Feng, Jiang, Metzner, Walter
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3634746/

id	pubmed-3634746
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-36347462013-05-01 Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats Liu, Ying Feng, Jiang Metzner, Walter Research Article Auditory feedback from the animal's own voice is essential during bat echolocation: to optimize signal detection, bats continuously adjust various call parameters in response to changing echo signals. Auditory feedback seems also necessary for controlling many bat communication calls, although it remains unclear how auditory feedback control differs in echolocation and communication. We tackled this question by analyzing echolocation and communication in greater horseshoe bats, whose echolocation pulses are dominated by a constant frequency component that matches the frequency range they hear best. To maintain echoes within this “auditory fovea”, horseshoe bats constantly adjust their echolocation call frequency depending on the frequency of the returning echo signal. This Doppler-shift compensation (DSC) behavior represents one of the most precise forms of sensory-motor feedback known. We examined the variability of echolocation pulses emitted at rest (resting frequencies, RFs) and one type of communication signal which resembles an echolocation pulse but is much shorter (short constant frequency communication calls, SCFs) and produced only during social interactions. We found that while RFs varied from day to day, corroborating earlier studies in other constant frequency bats, SCF-frequencies remained unchanged. In addition, RFs overlapped for some bats whereas SCF-frequencies were always distinctly different. This indicates that auditory feedback during echolocation changed with varying RFs but remained constant or may have been absent during emission of SCF calls for communication. This fundamentally different feedback mechanism for echolocation and communication may have enabled these bats to use SCF calls for individual recognition whereas they adjusted RF calls to accommodate the daily shifts of their auditory fovea. Public Library of Science 2013-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC3634746/ /pubmed/23638137 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062710 Text en © 2013 Liu et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Liu, Ying Feng, Jiang Metzner, Walter
spellingShingle	Liu, Ying Feng, Jiang Metzner, Walter Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
author_facet	Liu, Ying Feng, Jiang Metzner, Walter
author_sort	Liu, Ying
title	Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
title_short	Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
title_full	Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
title_fullStr	Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
title_full_unstemmed	Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats
title_sort	different auditory feedback control for echolocation and communication in horseshoe bats
description	Auditory feedback from the animal's own voice is essential during bat echolocation: to optimize signal detection, bats continuously adjust various call parameters in response to changing echo signals. Auditory feedback seems also necessary for controlling many bat communication calls, although it remains unclear how auditory feedback control differs in echolocation and communication. We tackled this question by analyzing echolocation and communication in greater horseshoe bats, whose echolocation pulses are dominated by a constant frequency component that matches the frequency range they hear best. To maintain echoes within this “auditory fovea”, horseshoe bats constantly adjust their echolocation call frequency depending on the frequency of the returning echo signal. This Doppler-shift compensation (DSC) behavior represents one of the most precise forms of sensory-motor feedback known. We examined the variability of echolocation pulses emitted at rest (resting frequencies, RFs) and one type of communication signal which resembles an echolocation pulse but is much shorter (short constant frequency communication calls, SCFs) and produced only during social interactions. We found that while RFs varied from day to day, corroborating earlier studies in other constant frequency bats, SCF-frequencies remained unchanged. In addition, RFs overlapped for some bats whereas SCF-frequencies were always distinctly different. This indicates that auditory feedback during echolocation changed with varying RFs but remained constant or may have been absent during emission of SCF calls for communication. This fundamentally different feedback mechanism for echolocation and communication may have enabled these bats to use SCF calls for individual recognition whereas they adjusted RF calls to accommodate the daily shifts of their auditory fovea.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3634746/
_version_	1611972341594587136

Different Auditory Feedback Control for Echolocation and Communication in Horseshoe Bats

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